depp v. heard

Johnny Depp Says He Was a ‘Crash Test Dummy for Me Too’

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It’s been three years since Johnny Depp won a defamation suit against his ex-wife Amber Heard after alleging in an op-ed she’d written about being a victim of domestic abuse (which did not include his name) had ruined his career and reputation. Since that trial — where fans cheered for him outside the courthouse and zealously defended him online — he has received a standing ovation at Cannes, signed a $20 million deal with Dior, and appeared at fashion shows, rock concerts, and even as the VMA’s moon man. All this to say, it’s been a pretty smooth comeback tour for Depp, all while Heard has largely retreated from the public eye after being mercilessly harassed online throughout the trial by pro-Depp diehards (many of whom were later found to be bots).

That’s not how Depp sees it, though. In an interview with the Sunday Times published on Saturday, he continued to portray himself as the victim, declaring he had been a “crash test dummy for Me Too.” When asked why he brought the case to court, Depp spoke dramatically of his decision to sue Heard in the U.S.

“Look, it had gone far enough,” Depp said in the interview. “I knew I’d have to semi-eviscerate myself. Everyone was saying, ‘It’ll go away!’ But I can’t trust that. What will go away? The fiction pawned around the fucking globe? No it won’t. If I don’t try to represent the truth it will be like I’ve actually committed the acts I am accused of. And my kids will have to live with it. Their kids. Kids that I’ve met in hospitals. So the night before the trial in Virginia I didn’t feel nervous. If you don’t have to memorize lines, if you’re just speaking the truth? Roll the dice.”

To be clear, not everyone agreed that Depp was “speaking the truth” — two years before his defamation trial with Heard, he lost a libel case against The Sun when a London court ruled that the publication’s description of him as a “wife beater” was “substantially true.” A U.S. jury may have ruled in his favor, but Depp still claims he was done “dirty” during the trial — despite the fact that Heard became the subject of mass online vitriol, a significant portion of which was later determined to have been inorganic. After the trial’s conclusion, a data-science-research firm called the hate campaign against Heard “one of the worst cases of platform manipulation and flagrant abuse from a group of Twitter accounts.” But Depp seems to feel he was the one whose livelihood was on the line.

“Look, none of this was going to be easy, but I didn’t care,” he told the Sunday Times. “I thought, I’ll fight until the bitter fucking end. And if I end up pumping gas? That’s all right. I’ve done that before.”

Given how his past few months have gone, it’s hard to believe Depp ever really thought he’d end up working at a gas station. Since the trial concluded, he’s starred in the French film Jeanne du Barry, is now promoting his second directorial effort Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, and acts alongside Madelyn Cline and Penélope Cruz in the upcoming movie Day Drinker. 

When asked about his comeback, Depp perhaps unintentionally admitted that his supposed cancellation never really took hold. “Honestly? I didn’t go anywhere,” he said.

Johnny Depp Says He Was a ‘Crash Test Dummy for Me Too’